fine.

I just received this comment on my correctly attributed post about the poetry of Sandra Cisneros:

I work for the agency Susan Bergholz Literary Services, agent for Sandra Cisneros, and we insist that this excerpt, 'Mariela' from MY WICKED WICKED WAYS be taken down as it violates the author's copyright. Please spare us having to send an official letter to the host of your blog.

With sincere thanks,
Melanie Fleishman
asst to Susan Bergholz


I removed it for now, but let's just say I'm not very pleased. How many times have I included excerpts from books (always with author's name, publication name, and usually a link or two) and haven't received comments about THOSE books.

Sandra, I love your work, but find some literary agents that aren't so uptight. Thanks, April.

poetry for the not so poetry inclined.

I admit it, I used to REALLY. HATE. poetry. If someone wanted me to know something, why didn't they just write it in a normal f-ing sentence, rather than breaking the words up across an entire page and using metaphors that were way too complex.

And then I realized I was just reading the wrong kind of poetry.

Turns out Romantic era poetry is not my cup of tea.

Without further ado, I present to you a poem by Sandra Cisneros. Her book, My Wicked Wicked Ways (not to be confused with Errol Flynn's autobiography of the same name) is her first collection of short-ish poems published in '87. I love all of them (the poems) in their own way, but this one, my friends, is one of my favorites.


***Unfortunately Mariela was removed. See this post.***

From Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

"What keeps you going isn't some fine destination but just the road you're on, and the fact that you know how to drive. You keep your eyes open, you see this damned-to-hell world you got born into, and you ask yourself, 'What life can I live that will let me breathe in and out and love somebody or something and not runs off screaming into the woods?'"


"...the very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That's about it. Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides."


"That's the great American disease, we forget. We watch the disasters parade by on TV, and every time we say: ' Forget it. This is somebody else's problem.'"


"Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity after their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand."